never learn to fish if I have to handle such beasts as
you. Monty takes them in his fingers, and even cuts them in pieces if he
doesn't have enough without. The horrid boy! He says it doesn't hurt
them, that they're so used to it, an' till this minute I never thought
how little sense there was in that. I--I guess I'll put a leaf on the
hook and throw that in. I should think a fish would rather eat a nice
clean leaf than a worm."

Selecting a bit of the red sorrel growing near, she baited her hook and
cast her line. She had learned how to do that from seeing Uncle Moses
test his various rods at home, and set herself to wait and watch with
the "patience" he prescribed for any successful angler.

Waiting, she fell to day-dreaming, and, for her further ease in this
line, curled herself down in the shade of the alders and closed her
eyes. Beautiful pictures came to her behind those shut lids, none more
lovely than this very scene of which she fancied she was the only living
human feature.

"All alone in God's beautiful world! With the sky so blue and white; the
woods so--so every wonderful color; the river so dark and babble-y,
chattering over the stones that it had more to say than it had time to
say it in; the birds singing and flying; the air so soft and warm; and
nobody here but me! Well, I'm glad that even I am here, just a little
girl like me, to tell Him there is somebody who sees and thanks Him!"

Then away she drifted into thoughts she could not have framed in words,
but which kept all fear from her and filled her young soul with a
longing to be good and to do good.

But she was not alone as she believed. Among those same alders lining
the river bank lay another of God's creatures, whose dreams were unlike
the child's, indeed, but upon whose clouded mind the beauty of that hour
was not wholly lost. He had been asleep, as she afterward declared she
had not been, and her converse with herself aroused him. He had lain
down where the bushes screened him well--for hiding was a second nature
to this man--and he did not move when he awoke. He merely fixed his eyes
upon Katharine as he saw her through the branches and watched what she
would do. He saw her fix her tackle, her struggle with herself
concerning the earthworm, and smiled dully. Once he had fished from that
same bridge. From among many later and less pleasant memories that stood
out as clearly as anything in these later days was ever clear to this
unfortuna